Inside the Block
We're shining a spotlight on the vibrant businesses and and unique history of the Warehouse Block in Lexington, Kentucky! Every first and third Sunday of the month we're serving up a fun blend of inspiring, behind-the-scenes stories of the Bluegrass region's most dynamic district!
Inside the Block
Episode 4: Mirror Twin - Part 1!
From homebrewer to head brewer, Mirror Twin's Derek DeFranco turned his beer passion into something extraordinary. Armed with a law degree and brewing knowledge from both his neighbor and the Siebel Institute, he transformed his hobby into a thriving business -- and certainly a Warehouse Block staple! Listen as Derek recounts Mirror Twin's launch in 2016 when it faced all the usual startup chaos, but a community's incredible support helped it flourish. Now, Derek leads a tight-knit team that feels more like family, crafting everything from decadent pastry stouts to playful cereal-inspired beers. With new taproom locations and creative brews on the horizon, Mirror Twin's future looks as bright as ever.
welcome back to inside the block podcast. I am here with derek defranco, head brewer.
Speaker 2:Uh, you're not head brewer director of brewing operations is my official type okay, director of brewing operations, but also like boss yeah, some people consider master brewer. I just I feel like that's a title, you know, that is well earned, and I just feel like I haven't got there yet what?
Speaker 1:how would you feel like you've earned by once. You feel like you're a master brewer. What would it take?
Speaker 2:some master brewers would say education, which you know. There's formal education programs. Uh yeah, I just kind of taught myself how to brew. I think time is one of those other things you know if you've been growing for a certain period of time. I've almost been growing for a decade, so maybe when we get to that, that, I feel like, is master grade level, art.
Speaker 1:To what kind of classes could you take? Does our university brew you?
Speaker 2:So there's a university called Siebel Institute and it is actually it's like the Harvard of familiar schools essentially. And so, you know, going there and getting a certificate would, I think, make it more legitimate for you to say I'm a master brewer. But I think another thing is time. I mean, if you've been brewing for 20 years, I think it well within your rights to call yourself a master brewer how did you even get into brewing?
Speaker 2:so when I first moved here, living in an apartment, and then moved into a house, and when I was moving things in, my next door neighbor was what I thought frying a terpy. And so I went up to him and I was like, hey, what are you doing? It was like I'm brewing beer and I had really just kind of brought the last couple things into the house. So I asked him do you mind if kind of hang around? He brought out some of his uh, homebrew that he had made previously and you know we sat around and you know kind of sipped on that, and then I helped him brew and from that going on I just began an obsession I guess part of the bug, yeah and I just loved it. I loved the process and I loved everything that went into it, creating something from nothing, and it kind of reminded me of being a chef, and so I just kept on tinkering and I brewed with his equipment for two or three times and then I finally started buying my own equipment. What I knew was this is something I really wanted to do. It's a fun hobby, right. And then I made some beer for my sister's what do you call it? The dinner before her wedding Rehearsal dinner, rehearsal dinner, and I made beers for certain people and, uh, my house was very popular because and I was always I was always trying to get rid of it so I could make more. And so at a point I was brewing once a week, sometimes two or three times a week, and by the time I was in humbrew clip too, and by the time I had gotten to a year into brewing, I had brewed more batches than some of the people in my club had brewed for 20 years.
Speaker 2:Just because I was brewing, so much, you know, and for some of them it was kind of a hobby, where they brew a batch of beer and, you know, once that batch was gone which may have taken two or three months they'd start to brew another batch of beer.
Speaker 2:And you know, once that batch was gone which may have taken two or three months they'd start to brew another batch of beer. So, you know, in a year they may have brewed, uh, four or five batches, where in that same year I had brewed 60. So that because I just I, I realized that every time I brewed I'd learn something and I just that bug for knowledge, that thirst for it, just kept me willing to bring and I learned something new every time. And then people would start to say things like man, your beer's really good. I'd be able to talk about opening a brewery, and I think every home brewer kind of has that thought in their back of their mind. But there are a lot of books and articles out there that say you know, if you're going to do that, you're taking something that you enjoy as a hobby and you're going to make it.
Speaker 2:And then it won't be as fun anymore. Right, and what a lot of people realize is when you own your own brewery, when you're the brewer and the owner, it's not just brewing beer. You know, you have to run a business and the facets of running the business go far and beyond just making beer. And so when people go into it just thinking I get to make beer, I get to do what I love every day, but it's not just that. And I think some people get into it thinking that and it's really a lot more difficult, and so they, they lose that passion and then, you know, eventually the brewery kind of goes on right, I had read a lot of books and, you know, went to law school that gave me a lot of and, you know, went to law school that gave me a lot of perseverance, this kind of personality, and so I knew, going into opening it, that it wasn't just going to be, hey, you have to make beer.
Speaker 2:Now there were challenges I still never expected, and it sometimes felt overwhelming, but just to even get the business started. But I just kept on going and it really retrospectively and I know it didn't feel like this at the time, but it was like we went from just talking about starting this business and I started the llc and I created facebook week. And I started the LLC and I created a Facebook week to like, all of a sudden, we were the day before opening and I'm, you know, up till two o'clock in the morning making sure we have all the brassware and all the shags are tapped and all that, and and here we are, almost eight years later and it's kind of like. It's still sometimes like how did that happen?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So wait what? What day was it? When you're like grand opening it was september 30th 2016. 2006, and was it successful? That day did you have a lot of traffic it? Was insane but was it? Uh, it was here in the warehouse district. Yeah, we were this building that we're in right now 723 this.
Speaker 2:We didn't require this building until after, so it was just the other dover okay, so the original one is 725.
Speaker 1:Yes, I got. And where the cocktail bar?
Speaker 2:is now. No, this is the cocktail.
Speaker 1:That's two, threes gotcha is the cocktail and the original warrant yeah, 725.
Speaker 2:So you know, when we opened we didn't know how it was gonna go, and so, even though these buildings being kind of the mirror image of each other, we thought was yeah, 725. So, you know, when we opened we didn't know how it was going to go and so, even though these buildings being kind of the mirror image of each other, we thought was really cool, we just did not want to take the risk of taking both the lease on us, and I think the landlords would have been like we don't think that's a good idea. Yeah, start small. So then, so, to answer your question about the opening. So then, so, to answer your question about the opening we had, I had spent a lot of time going out once.
Speaker 2:I knew this place was going to open and there pretty much was no turning back. I would go to a lot of events, like back then they had the warehouse blocks and even though we weren't open for business, I would have t-shirts made and we would set up and we would sell t-shirts and we would talk to people about hey, if there are times, chat will, let us set up right in front of the building. And you would say, hey, you know we're opening up the brewery here and I had started our facebook a year before we even opened and that kind of started building traction. We did a lot of marketing and so that paid off and the first day we were open there was a line out the door from noon to 11 o'clock it was crazy, but you hadn't felt so good, right, like you'd worked so hard for that moment.
Speaker 1:Or were you just running around like a mad, a bad person?
Speaker 2:what's that? Yeah, it was hard to enjoy it and really stop to think about it, because you were running around like you know, I shouldn't know their head cut off, because there were some beers that were tapped that didn't get fully carbonated, so I was running back there like shaking the cakes to carbonate them. I love it, it. It was crazy. You know, we didn't really know how much staff to have. So you know, now I have a really good staff and I don't have to be here like that all as often, and really not as much nearly as when we first opened.
Speaker 2:But back then, you know, it was just me. I had a bar manager and we were all just kind of doing our best, and so I was running around everywhere trying to get stuff done. I was, you know, I'd clean glasses and I did whatever it took. So I really didn't get much of a chance to sit down and enjoy it, especially that first hike, and then I would tell this kind of funny story. So we didn't really know how much last we were by, and by the time we had opened we were kind of running out of money. You know, like there was this amount of investment and by that time you know, there it had been spatched on equipment and all that stuff, startup.
Speaker 2:So we needed, we needed the income to start coming in, but we didn't really know how much glass wear or anything like that. So we ordered like 200 something, uh, glasses, but based on our occupancy, we thought, okay, that that should be fine. Well, we counted, uh, the next day, saturday, and we had a hundred and something glasses buffed. So either 100 glasses got broken, which it's not my suspicion uh I think the hundred glasses walked out the door, which you know I'm right, it said marriage went on them.
Speaker 2:Do you think people were like oh, this is from the I watched a group of people take a stack of probably 20 glasses out to their car and did you sample well? So they were coming around the garage door and I was giving a tour. And I saw them walk by and there's a side door and I thought they were just going around. And then, as I was giving the tour, I kind of got closer to the garage door and I looked out towards the little gravel lot and noticed that they were by their car and at that point it was kind of too late to say anything. Saturday we're down to 100 glasses and in a panic we couldn't find enough, just like just normal pint glasses. So we had to go buy solo cups. And so I remember at some point on that Saturday night, standing around there's hundreds of people everywhere all holding red solo cups and I just thought did we just grow a fraternity party?
Speaker 1:Pong Brewed Brew and red solo cups on them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean I can't remember, but it wouldn't surprise me if people were playing flippy cup at beer pong, at solo cups.
Speaker 1:The bite you were going for.
Speaker 2:But it was a crazy opening. It went better than I could have ever expected and you know, we kept it going the only that Sunday, because I think I had ruined myself ragged. I got the fruit, but I was the only brewer. My other business partners were not, you know, know, brewers. And so the idea was I was always going to be the brewer.
Speaker 2:I got sick and we were on a very small brewing system at the time. You remember it was like connor gallant. So we were running out of beer our own deer and so we had to start buying guest taps and you know, that kind of hurt us a little bit. So, my business partner, so I'd have to hire another brewer and I hired dub. He's my first brewer that I hired because I had kind of helped train him a little bit, because he, he wanted to get into the professional brewing scene and he, uh, he's been amazing ever since. Yeah, and that helped a lot because you know there were days where I couldn't necessarily brew by myself and him coming in, we didn't run into that problem as much. So it's good.
Speaker 1:So what do you attribute? I mean, you're, without a doubt, one of one of the most, if not the most, successful breweries here uxentep and you've grown slowly right over the years. You expand in slowly.
Speaker 2:What do you attribute that success to especially, I mean, there's some breweries that just don't make it and like seat up um, I think one thing is we've always been willing to listen to our customers, and not only of what kind of styles we should make, but also, hey, this beer doesn't taste that great. You know, sometimes you have to take your lumps and you have to know not every beer you make is perfect. And I think it's easy to kind of go everything I make is amazing and you have to go away from that and say, okay, well, look, maybe this does have some flaws. So you kind of have to be vulnerable in that respect and I think we've done a good job of that, because not every beer you make is going to be exactly perfect, especially when you're starting out and you don't know your system, you don't know your water profiles as well.
Speaker 2:There's a lot that goes into the brewing process, that each brewing system and each different technique can have an effect on the quality and each different technique can have an effect on the quality. And also when you're starting, you're trying to start with the least amount of ingredient cost but also trying to maintain high quality. So sometimes that can affect overall body. So one is just kind of being humble and understanding and listening to your customers is just kind of being humble and understanding and listening to your customers. I think all also like. We've always treated our employees kind of like you want to treat it, if you will. I was an employee all my life, up until I opened up theater trend, and so I knew how I'd like to be treated and how I didn't, so I always try to treat our employees with respect.
Speaker 1:There's very much a family by year, very much.
Speaker 2:And I don't like to micromanage and, you know, get upset with the team. Everybody makes mistakes, you know, just kind of talk things through and just treat everyone with respect, and I think that makes them want to work here and makes them happy to come to work, because that's important. You know, if they're happy to come to work, then they're going to want to come into work, do the best job they can and you know everyone has a bad day but for the most part, if they will afford to come to work, then they're going to do they're going to do much better work. Yeah, they're going to provide a better customer service experience, and that's what it's all about.
Speaker 2:I think growing slowly was also kind of organically helped us a lot, because we never got into deep with debt and with having to focus on paying that debt service. But and I think we've just always really paid attention to, two things that I think have really helped us grow is quality making sure our quality is always high and consistent, and then also, I think a big thing is just always coming out with you crazy stuff yeah you know, and people come in every monday just to try the new lyric monday is that always when it's like release a mirror?
Speaker 1:tell me about.
Speaker 2:So it kind of started off as these one-off beers that we did to kind of test them, see how people liked them, and so we make about five gallons of a beer and we infuse it with crazy flavors. So the one that we have on tap now is a pastry south, a barrel aged pastry south that I put four boxes of honey buns into.
Speaker 1:yeah, honey buns don't get their respect.
Speaker 2:They deserve that you know I hadn't had one in a long time, and I'm not saying that I tasted one while I was whipping in a car, putting them in a cage. No, we would never have seen, Definitely didn't do that. But if I had done it it was like wow, these are a lot better. Yeah, they hit different.
Speaker 1:Can I run them up? Yeah, when they eat them up for 10 seconds and you open up a little package 10 seconds in the microwave to make them all.
Speaker 2:That would have been a game changer, yeah oh yeah it melts the butt, but it was still very good, yeah you know, and uh, it turned out very well. So the mirror, my day, is kind of always one of those really wacky things that we do, and sometimes we like takeovers with it. We were joking one time about how crazy it was that there's like a day for everything, and then, lo and behold, we found out that it's march 7th, is national cereal day, and I was like we can take a bunch of cereals, put them in beer, what? What have you done? What we did? The cementos crunch, we've done. Fruit loops, uh, pebbles, oops, all varies we've done cap crunch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, captain, french peanut butter carpet crunch. And the regular captain crunch. Right, you know you got to go to berries, because regular captain crunch just kind of tastes like, but I don't know, like sugary water, sugar cardboard. Yeah, right, um, the cinnamon toast crunch. One is always a big hit it's a classic yeah, and it's, I don't know, a lot of cocoa puffs.
Speaker 2:You know, we've even found like weird, like all the all the oreo cereal yeah, yeah yeah, we've done so many different cereals and now, like they're making all you know, like we're gonna make a cereal with all banana ruts flavoring and that's so specific. Yeah, I love that and so, uh, you know, we always kind of on the uh scalp for, yeah, just like eating out in the wild.
Speaker 1:Or you're at your house, you're at the garage, are you like constantly looking for stuff to keep them?
Speaker 2:puppy here, yep, yeah, that's great and it's really fun when you're making a big batch of something and you got a Costco and you have 18 boxes of cinnamon toast crunch, yeah, and and the cashier is like, do you really like getting my mother right? Or the cinnamon toast crush. I was like, do I say something or I?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, not really All in there.
Speaker 2:I have an addiction. I'm just crazy. Yeah, no mammoths going in beard, yeah. And then that always elicits a lot more questions. I don't know, but yeah, that's always funner, like you go into a grocery store and you buy their bowl or like shelf of a cereal. It's just always like what's going on. That's always fun. Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1:I like that, this scene coming a mile away, and I restopped the cabbage ranch. Yep, what about savory Do you put?
Speaker 2:in savory things often, tim, we made a pizza beer once.
Speaker 1:How'd that go?
Speaker 2:So it tasted exactly like a pizza, okay, but it was kind of weird. It was one of those things where you know you want a sample of it, but you probably wouldn't drink a whole glass. We, you want a sample of it, you probably wouldn't drink a whole glass. Uh, we've done some things with bacon.
Speaker 2:yeah, um you, bacon is a flavor that you have to have a gentle touch with I'm sure strong, because it's strong well, you know, it can be a little overpowering and then also like when you mix anything we were talking about the other day with a lot of fat.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know that fat will separate in the mirror and it looks super gross. So you have to be careful about where you source the bacon and, like, if you're going to use like really real cooked bacon, you have to really try to make sure that it's super lean and you're trying to get as much of that fat out as possible. Um, sometimes you'll supplement that with, like some of the bacon bits, because I don't think they're real bacon. Yeah, no, uh, I think those are just like can be chips. Yeah, but they bacon chips. Yeah, but try, like what other savory things?
Speaker 1:I want to see y'all move into like, uh, like asian food fusion flavor, like just throw msg and brie.
Speaker 2:I'm a huge fan of msg, by the way. Yeah, uh, the people, it's not a bad rap for us. They got a bad rap. Yeah, but uh, I threw I, I season everything with it. When I don't season something with it, I'm like this doesn't have any flavor yeah, this can ask more of the cake.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be mommy.
Speaker 2:Yeah yep, love it, and that some people say it gives them headaches and all that.
Speaker 1:I've never had that issue no, it's not in the week, if you're no, no, no.
Speaker 2:But if you make fried rice, if you don't use msg, it's not real fried rice.
Speaker 1:No, so I'll die on that dough so you have grown, take so started at 725, then opened 723, the cocktail bar, and then moved operations or during that time you like, the actual brewing operations to across the street. A lot of people don't realize you actually brew right across, natural, yeah, from the mirror to where most people drain. And then tell us about the annex because that's neat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the annex came available to us about a year and a half ago. We had learned that the tenants had moved out, and so I was talking to the landlord and the rent was actually pretty well priced and we were getting a lot of well. So the truth is doug had been with me since the very beginning, and then I have my head brewer, mike, who I ended up promoting to head brewer and then doug promoting to head brewer, and then doug his promotion was he was really big in the need of the, so at first we started off as a myriad meery, yeah, and we my business partner and I invested into the meery, yeah, and basically I said to doug, uh, what we helped to design it and do all that stuff.
Speaker 2:And then it was like, okay, let's open up and let's see what happens. And unfortunately, just there wasn't as much of a demand for me as I have wanted.
Speaker 1:Which I think is crazy because I so I went to the annex last. I don't know if I told people, so not there, but I, a friend of mine, got 10 year MDK and we had to refer a 10 year party and I love the annex for a million reasons. I think it's such a great spot for uh, like a small private party uh, partly due to how cool you guys are with uh being pretty lax about even bringing your own food if you want, like all these great things, but there was meat that was being sold there and and, of course, we were able to taste. It's like I, it's such a different cool flavor profile than beer and I don't like love, love, love here, but I really like to eat, so is there. Do you find that often that, like, some people lean more towards one or the other? And what? What gives you what? What makes you think like there wasn't a a big market to be what is?
Speaker 2:meat. Yes, so meat is honey. Wine, okay, and it's actually the oldest fermented beverage known to for record and date back to egyptian times. And basically, just you take honey and you dilute it, it with a little bit of water, and you add yeast and you ferment it and it's more like wine than it is beer. But you can also make it a little bit more ABD by diluting it more and then adding carbonation, so it's a little bit more. That's more like a seltzer. I guess this is not going to have the body of beer, and so you can infuse it with different fruits, different flavors, and that's a lot of what we did. You know, we had an espresso black currant that was my favorite yeah, yeah, that was everyone's, that was the number one hitter.
Speaker 2:Like you can have just basic mead where it's just the honey flavor, you can add, uh, some you know apple flavoring to it. I mean, it's just kind of like beer anything, and fruits tend to work really well, like peach and apricot and all those things, and so we did a lot of that. But it just the sales went there and at the same time we had gotten a lot of requests for, uh, private parks and it's just very difficult to close and have our buildings down, sure, especially because one has our wall on dust, and so we saw an opportunity with the annex to basically pivot it to just doing by the parties and it's actually paid off and we've had it booked out pretty consistently for the next bubble fonts so I mean it's got a full bar in there, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's got a full bar. I mean it's a really nice, very clean, very spacious spot and you know we run it out for a party. So if you have like a bachelor party you want to throw, you don't really have a minimum. Normally what we do is there's just a deposit that goes to a to your bill. Yeah, overall, and they're mostly just because we've had people who will book it and then not show up and that we've got boys, you're court or scheduled to work and now we're not going to make any money. So the the deposit is really just to ensure face it. Yeah, yeah, of course, but you know it goes to your bar tab and it it's a great place to have corporate, uh, events.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean there's a little almost like offices upstairs that are all blasts, so you needed to have like two separate rooms for something like for our party. There were a bunch of kids and so we just put like coloring books and all these things up there and they all just like clayed upstairs. And then the adults were down for it. It was cheese. It was a really. It's a really cool setup. I liked it a lot, yeah. And then there's the. There's like a garage on the back of it. So if you want, like this, fresh air coming in or you have people that are parking in the back are going to lock up, it's great, it's a really great.
Speaker 2:It's a good spot to keep, as it can make sense yeah, and you know, really, because we've had so much going on, we haven't really advertised much about it. But you know it's. We've done a little, but just not as much as we do for a mirror twin, and so I think that once we get our groove and kind of everything settles, we have more time to market and reach out for that and it'll continue to just grow.
Speaker 1:I know, I mean word of mouth, I mean it's spreading. I think already it's such a good spot, especially since let me try it on national and speaking of you were telling me the other day too about how, uh, you know, a good portion of your success too is being here in the warehouse block, and part of that is the. You know you were one of the first businesses in the warehouse block right, and then Chad Walker, who owns the warehouse block, and Jill the walkers fought hard to make sure that this was like an entertainment zoning. Can you tell me about that again?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's the entertainment district license, and so what's really cool about it is that you can buy a drink here and then just tell one of the bartenders that you're gonna carry it around, and then but not take the glass to their farm and see obviously, well, yeah, uh, if you, if you tell one of the bartenders, hey, because one of the caveats to their licensing is that the cup has to be obviously marked, okay.
Speaker 2:And so if someone comes in and says, hey, I'm gonna walk around the neighborhood with this and there's just a sticker we put on the cup that covers of us and the patron, so you know if the police officer will drive down the road, see that you're like, okay, that's, that's fine. Yeah, uh, it's not supposed to be in a closed container, but I felt like it can't and it has to be in my cup like, like what you wish, he grew.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, interesting and so someone would come up say, hey, I'm gonna take this down to the void or to epping's, I'm gonna go shopping.
Speaker 2:You know, I'll follow the schools with my pack, my drink yeah, that they can walk freely throughout the block with their alcohol. Now, whether or not the other establishments will let them in, that is up to them, and I think most people would probably say, you know, hey, why don't you finish that before you come in? But you can walk all the way throughout the block without having and you're making it through the farmer farming. Yes, that is a great, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I like that, yeah, and so there's. It's great for events too, obviously, and there used to be, or there's still continues to, really great events Like next to Void Saki In between here, yeah, also. So, speaking of events, tell us Mirror Twin stuff that's coming out. I'm not sure when this episode come out, but I know you're giving anniversary party the end of September.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And then what else the rest of the year gives to us.
Speaker 2:So our anniversary is obviously September 30th. We will turn eight. Eight, which is some man's hard to believe. Yeah, I hate it For sure. Sometimes it feels like 20 years, sometimes it feels like it was yesterday, but we have that coming up. We basically do like a week uh on stuff, and so september 30th is kind of the kickoff and that will be a mirror monday release and what we're actually going to do is, uh, it's gonna be five releases of uh all crumble cookie cues ears and you know how. Crumble cookie only like. There's only one flavor they do like chopper chip and every other flavor is just that there. Yes, so the monday before is when we're gonna get the cookies so you don't, you don't even know we have no idea.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and then. So that's gonna be our mirror monday takeover, and then we normally do 10, but we're gonna do five this time and then save the other five for, uh, saturday and then tuesday. We have beers that our bartenders get to to pick and make, and so that's always the front time. Some of them come out with crazy concoctions that I necessarily wouldn't do myself.
Speaker 1:Can you tell us any of those?
Speaker 2:Someone wants to do a baked bean red ale.
Speaker 1:Like Bush's baby Bush's Look great dead dog. They miss the recipe.
Speaker 2:I love it yeah he was very expensive, but you know we should try. Yeah, uh, so the beer will probably be called roll that beautiful beer footage, amazing. Um, what's the other one?
Speaker 2:the other one's gonna be uh you really tap into cinnamon apple cider okay, thank you loving, yeah, very fall stuff and, uh, trying to think the other one's better. But we were just talking about my bartender is now blanking on that uh, but I think the other one's gonna be some kind of like ice cream infused beer. So that's the tuesday. Wednesday we have trivia, uh, and then thursday we normally have like a collab release. Friday we have a bunch of can releases, uh. The friday before actually, we have uh trib and roots playing. They play for us every year since we'd opened and we always make them a special gear called trib and fruits, and so that will be coming up as well.
Speaker 2:That's the friday the 27th, so I'm kind of going back a little bit. And then friday we have can releases, our hazy birthday, a bunch of different releases. And then saturday we're having a release with great and moon, oh cool, yeah, it's a raspberry sorbet, balsamic sour, amazing. And then we also have two different barrel aged stouts coming out, and then the five new beers that will be just a keg worth of. And we also have a release with our friends at street side brewing in cincinnati.
Speaker 2:Their anniversary is the exact same day as us and it's funny because they're like master brewer but the me of their place. Like the owner, him and I are, are like very similar people, and so we also make very similar styles. And we did that without even knowing each other existed. You know, we did a flab. We found out that our anniversaries overlap on the same day, and so we decided that we would do claps as often as we could for our birthdays. So that is going to be a uh, double west coast ipa with eight different mops for each year with better ed business.
Speaker 1:Oh well, your penchant for dad jokes works well with the funds needed for all of these different beer names.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm a big fan of dad jokes. Dad jokes and my boys hate it, which makes me love it.
Speaker 1:You are a dad, so it can work yeah words.
Speaker 2:yes, I mean, you know, don't? Uh, don't think for a second. I wasn't also telling these dad jokes before I was a father, but they definitely got worse once. I had much guys. Of course, yeah, because you know I feel that as a parent. You know it's hard to be a parent. It's the best thing you'll ever do, but it's also very difficult and it is your right and pretty much what makes being a parent worth it to embarrass the heck out of them. Oh, absolutely Every chance I get. Yeah, every chance you get, and I think that's right. Dad jokes where he can. Oh, absolutely Every chance I get. Yeah, you have a chance to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's why dad jokes where he can't. Yeah, absolutely yeah. Is it going to be wild someday to see your son drinking at Nearswar?
Speaker 2:Uh, yes, you know. I mean, hopefully one day he gets to take over the, the family business.
Speaker 1:But what if he absolutely needs beer?
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, I doubt that'll happen, but you know, if he ate beer he gets weird yeah.
Speaker 1:We'll just work on the cocktail side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's pretty immersed in it this whole time.
Speaker 1:I bet he would have some really great clayware ideas yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, who knows? I mean the world may look like a very different place in what is that 15 years?
Speaker 1:Speaking of flake, has there ever been a complete fail of a flavor in a beer where you're like you were microdoodle, you're like this is not active? Did they all work on some level?
Speaker 2:It's been a while since we had that beer was like well, because you finally you kind of get a pretty good feel for like what was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a little, do well.
Speaker 2:Early on, we had some beers that kind of soured and it wasn't contextual, and so, instead of dumping them, we aged them in barrels with a yeast strain called Bratomyces, which will continue to ferment the beer and develop new flavor compounds. And we pulled one of those barrels once we just want to see if it would work. You know, if a beer is's bad, you dump it right. But sometimes you're like maybe this, we can save this, and when you're it's early on and you know every penny counts, you do what you can. And we opened that barrel and it was like whoa, no, it immediately it did not age well, uh, so we dumped that. And uh, you know, some, some of the savory stuff, like fruits, always work. Um, you know, sweet things always work, but some savory things do not pan out very yet. So, and uh, we, we had to dump those. But, like I said, it's been a while, so it's hard for me to remember the exact beer, but I do remember tasting it being like nope, let's start all over, yeah no.
Speaker 1:So what about the future of muritoy? You grown, you've got the annex, you know. You got these four different properties within the warehouse block. Are you planning on expanding anymore? Any, any future goals? Any? Keep doing what you're doing. Doing it well it's.
Speaker 2:We've had a lot of challenges since we opened. Uh, any business does. Uh, obviously, the particular industry that we're in covid was pretty, pretty hard Sure, and it's felt like since we've opened it's been just like nonstop growth, which has been great.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think we're finally at a point where we have enough production to meet our current goals. And the demand, and the demand, the demand, yeah, but you know you still want to grow. I think production will stay in that building for the foreseeable future. We still have room to add some more tanks if we need to produce more liquid. But for me and my business partner would agree the next step is just another satellite tap room, and so we always have our eyes open for something like that. Uh, I get a lot of requests for, you know, the south side of lexington, or because you know you want it far enough away that it's not going to cannibalize business. Sure, right, and uh, I think the brandon crossing area would be a really good spot so good, and then you're hitting.
Speaker 1:I mean then you'd be in another cap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like not quite you know yeah and so, uh, that that's where we've had our eyes open. You know, another richmond or winchester has also been something that we've kept our eyes on. It's just being patient, making sure that we pick the right location and, you know, obviously with interest rates being kind of high, it makes you a little bit more eerie. So if we find something, that's a good deal. The problem is and it affects commercial real estate as well is that prices are high and interest rates are up. You know, if prices were low, wow, you get this bit. You're building for pennies. On the dollar, yeah, the 7% doesn't seem so high, but because you have like a two-sided storm in that regard, that makes you a little bit, you know, weary. So we were just trying to wait for the the right moment. But that is our next steps is, as far as we see, verse well, very bad.
Speaker 1:So tell us about Derek behind the seats. We know you're a parent. You like football yep, you like dad jokes, little dad jokes, dad jokes. Tell us more. What do you do if you have a complete Saturday completely free? Where are you at and what seats? Anybody you at?
Speaker 2:I thought you said tell me your dad jokes.
Speaker 1:No, we could do that too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you know why Waldo only wears stripes? I'm not a, he doesn't want to be spotted. So more yoga. So Saturday I have to myself. Yeah, you know I like to spend it with my family, with my son and with my girlfriend. I like watching football. You know I do like coming up to the brewery and, you know, hanging out. We've got really good specials and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So it's good to come here and let's see people having a good time and, yeah, and eating, uh, good food so you do drink on your off time like sometimes like, yeah, I, you know, I try not to come every day, sure, but on a Saturday, if I didn't own this place and this place existed, I would still patronize here, because I do really like coming here and we really worked hard to build an atmosphere where that is the case, where people are like you. I love coming to mirror training because I can bring my kids.
Speaker 1:I think, what is my?
Speaker 2:family. I can bring my dog. Yep, uh, I, you know the product's always good and we're all something we're always working on. We miss the mark sometimes and but that's something that we did, you know, training our staff and talking to them and just being aware that we always just need to be on our game the best we can. But, yeah, I do really enjoy coming here and just kind of hanging out, and my son loves it because he knows I own the place, like Daddy, take her on a forklift, let's get into this fun there. He is forklift certified now, so amazing, huh, um.
Speaker 1:But if I were you, I would just walk around this place every day like can you the cast keep?
Speaker 2:not see how you think that then you learn very quickly.
Speaker 1:You want to be incognito totally because some people you're like I need to talk to you about how I feel about beer. You should release this, or yeah, and that still happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, so being incognito is definitely the the way to go, but it also walked through and someone would be like hey, aren't you the owner? Yeah, hey sit and talk. I am let's talk, and I do love that yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean you have great customers. Every time I come here it's always I mean it's just, it's good, it's a good buy. You know it's good to people like your twin, like that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there are people who are just coming here to have. That's what breweries and the industry is all about Food, whether you're going to dine at a fine restaurant but you want to escape being in your own house all week and having soccer games and practices and school.
Speaker 2:so people will be able to places like near trend and you know really a lot of the places down here on the block to kind of escape from that. And we just want to be a place that people choose to come because of the good atmosphere, the food, good beer, high quality a bit of an escape, yeah yeah. And the customer service. I mean I sit here and I watch the employees and they just do a phenomenal job and I could not, this place would not be successful without all the bartenders and you know them doing what they do, and it's not an easy job. It can be very stressful at times and I very appreciate how much they care and you know I will. They know how much I appreciate that sure in india.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're such a good guy and I was telling my husband this past weekend about meeting the mirror 20 guys I'm maybe we should tell you this but I was like I was kind of assuming that they would just be like kind of like jerks, you know, to something I mean probably like from being back in like my college days, I always just assumed that like I want to like frat boy energy around, like beer in general, and so it's like not bad at all, you know. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, like it's a shock that you're so nice. Yeah, I totally get that. Is that a stereotype, kind of in the field?
Speaker 2:well, I think craft beer is a little bit different. Right, because we are. It's just a different environment. You know, we're definitely more open and, and you know, fun loving. Yeah, uh, you know, I always used to joke, I still have to go do cles. Well, my uh, to keep up my bar license, okay, my law license, and so, you know, you go to a conference with a bunch of lawyers and then you go to a conference with a bunch of brewers and this is a very good experience. Yeah, uh, just, you know, bre are all. We all want to help each other. We've all been through very similar experiences. It's just not very cutthroat. You know, we all realize that in order for this industry to survive, we all need to be making the best brew we can.
Speaker 1:Well, there's a success out there for everybody. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know it's still a small segment of the market share for everybody. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know it's still a small segment of the market share, and so we all realize that for us to expand that market share, we all need to be making good quality beer. We all need every so many. Every time someone comes in here as a first time brewery patron right, and I'm not talking about Mirage, but I'm talking about maybe Enchanto, right, this is your experience, your first experience going into a brewery. If you have a good experience here, you're going to want to go to more brewers. If you don't have a good experience here, you're going to say a brewery seems not for me. And so we all want the former to happen. And so that's, I think, why we all are so close with each other, help each other to the extent we can help each other, and it's a fun community. So I, uh, I think it's opposite than the the frat, yeah, beer community it's.
Speaker 1:It's more like, you know, chubby bearded guys, just, you know, loving dad jokes so there's a lot of science, a lot of a lot of Muslim deer and nerdiness imaginable. Yeah, all of this, yeah definitely deer and derby does yes, yeah, shouldn't be put that on your tombstone? Yeah, well, thanks for talking with me today yeah, it's been great.
Speaker 2:Uh, I love.
Speaker 2:I was talking about mirachwin and now it's grown and it's all where we are today and I hope to keep having these conversations 20 years from now and I loved seeing the warehouse block blow up the way it has with all these businesses, and I really can't say enough good things about the walkers and how they've really perpetuated that growth and you know we've always worked well together and I'm still within our best interest to continue to see that growth happen and we just love being down here and we love all of our neighbors. We are here for all their neighbors. Somebody's about to fold lift or decision lift. We, unless we're in the middle of using it, we've never said no, we just love this neighborhood. We just mean to keep making deer and dad jokes and then make names of fears that are dad jokes yes also.
Speaker 1:But I mean, if you ever were to come out with something kind of like well then, being a lame and plain, you know we'd worry about just you. In general, how's he doing? Yeah?
Speaker 2:is he? Take the forklift yeah, well, we sponsored. We had a beer named. Why do cows have hooves?
Speaker 1:That was the whole name of it. Why do they have hooves?
Speaker 2:They're lactose.
Speaker 1:There's one about a cow on the floor. I forget it. Oh, I know it. Front right oh, ground beef.
Speaker 2:What do you call a cow on the floor? Yeah, zombie, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a good one.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you again for having me on. Thank you too, garrett. So we uh, this comes out when people think man, I gotta get down to the warehouse blocker. See those guys. You guys see them when I'm down there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely For sure. I know they will.
Speaker 2:It's a bunch of warm year.
Speaker 1:Monday yep, that's, I didn't even know about it yeah, I'm it and our anniversary. That will be a really, really fun time. There you go. Thanks again.